KARACHI: No story with a powerful message prepared for a theatrical production can yield the required results if its makers don’t pay heed to the basics of art — after all, a drama produced on stage is an art form. What are those basics? The message should not be drummed into the audience’s ears, otherwise it would end up looking like a forced effort; the principal performers should believe, or seen to believe, in the content they’re trying to put across; the production design should not divide the audience’s attention, etc.

There are more, but let’s stick to these three because the play, Perahan, directed by Bazelah Mustafa on Thursday as part of the ongoing International Theatre Festival organised by the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa), lacked all of them.

One says this because at the heart of the drama is a young girl Anna (Kiran Siddiqui) who is battling a neurological disorder, epilepsy, and a psychological ailment. Apparently, she suffers from it due to the ‘traumatic death’ of her mother. Now this is big enough an issue. But subjects such as free will and a therapist’s feelings for her patient or vice versa are also thrown into the mix, making the storyline a bit heavy to handle. It could have been treated well if the actors did not sound as if they were delivering sermons on obscurantism (treatment of illnesses through pirs) or living one’s life the way one wants to. Subtlety, in such cases, does the trick. It did not happen on Thursday.

Back to the story: after her mother’s demise Anna is raised by her father Saboor (Samhan Ghazi) and nanny Razia (Shabana Hassan). Saboor is in an intimate relationship with Shireen (Bazelah Mustafa) who, for some odd reason despite being an open-minded person, does not like Razia or Anna. Then there’s the character of Dr Karim (Farhan Alam) who treats Anna with a great deal of compassion, which is why Anna starts to have feelings for him.

This all sounds reasonable. The problem is the in-your-face nature of the script. The way Saboor tries to enable Razia to understand the importance of reasoning and the manner in which Karim treats Anna and converses with Saboor and Razia are amateurish. The set of the play doesn’t help either. Anna’s room is shown on a raised floor behind the main setting (all of which is black) for which ladders are placed on both sides. One lost count how many times Razia went up the ladders and came down with Anna who for the most part spoke in monosyllables during the performance, forcing those who were in the theatre hall to move their necks up and down to get the hang of things.

Sadly, even two of Napa’s most outstanding actors Farhan Alam and Shabana Hassan, despite their all-out effort, could not do much with clunky stage directions.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2019